• July 30, 2008

About 59% of email users said that they check their messages while in the bathroom--up 6 percentage points from last year, according to AOL Mail's fourth annual Email Addiction Survey. The survey, which AOL conducted in conjunction with Beta Research, polled 4,000 email users ages 13 and up, and found that use of email in increasingly strange places was on the rise.

For example, more than two-thirds of Americans said they checked email while in bed (in pajamas, no less), and 15% of respondents said that they even scanned messages while in church. Meanwhile, some 50% of the respondents said that they checked their email while driving, up by 13 percentage points from last year--not a favorable statistic in terms of driver and passenger safety.

"We really do live in a 24-7 society and it's not uncommon to be online and checking email at all hours of the day," said Regina Lewis, AOL Online Consumer Advisor. According to Lewis, the research also shows that a significant number of Americans have become addicted to email as they're increasingly unable to detach from their inboxes, regardless of whether they contain business or personal messages. In fact, nearly half (46%) of all survey respondents admitted to being email addicts, up from just 15% last year. --Tameka Kee